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Anyone using Siemens CentraLink for qc? I’m having trouble understanding how to set up the qc. i understand the target is the mean but i don’t get the deviation part. The instruction manual says to enter 1 but that makes the range too tight and 2 makes it too wide when compared to the manufacture ranges. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance

Thanks for the feedback everyone. We all feel the same way. We are part of a health system of several hospitals and it is the main campus that is discussing implementing this new policy. We are trying to find official standards that we can use to justify not doing it. We all agree that it is very risky to the patients, but if they say it is the policy, then we would have to abide by that. Frustrating to say the least.

Hello everyone, Just wanted to see what everyone thinks about a new policy the facility I work at is discussing implementing soon. The new policy would be that it is ok to accept unlabeled patient specimens as long as the labels are in the bio bag with the specimens and it is only one patient. It seems to me (and the rest of the laboratory) that this would be in violation of our accrediting agencies standards. I haven't had time to search through all the standards for this so if anyone could point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

We have a issue that has been up for discussion lately at my facility regarding identifying antibodies as cold agglutinins. Per (new) supervisor, if we rule out all allos on the abid panel and our auto control is negative, we should perform a prewarm screen and if it is negative, identification is documented as "cold agglutinin". We then perform prewarm crossmatches for the patient. I have seen this policy before at a previous facility I worked at, but this is new to some of the techs at my current facility. And because I have been at current facility for several years now and followed the policy of the recently retired supervisor of identifying everything or sending it to the reference lab, it now makes me a little uncomfortable too. The claim by some is that there are specific tests available for identifying cold agglutinins and that we shouldn't just call them that without doing these additional tests. Another claim is that the hematology sample would have erroneous indices if a true cold agg was present but it did not. Any input from the bb gurus on this? (Ortho gel panel A and B were ran along with the initial gel screen where there were multiple 1-3+ reactions but all allos were ruled out using at least 3 homozygous cells. Auto control negative.)

So the director knows the correct answer is option 2...it is the trainee who thinks it is option 1 and is complaining to the director that it is a trick question??? Sounds like the trainee needs some more training to me.

Is anyone currently in or ever been in the Rush University dual Masters program for Clinical Lab Management with an SBB? I have been researching online programs for about a year now and this one seems like the best, but it is very expensive...almost $600 per credit hour with a total of 65 credit hours required to graduate. I have emailed the contact person regarding basic info such as clinical requirements, graduation rates, etc, but would like unbiased opinions, thoughts, experiences. This is a lot of money to invest in something that may not be as good as it seems. Any information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Thanks everyone for the input. We are all keeping our fingers crossed that our new supervisor will discontinue some of these practices that were started 40+ years ago (before computers) and have continued to today.

If someone mistakenly places an unconfirmed unit on the confirmed shelf and you are on downtime, there is a possibility of an unconfirmed unit getting transfused. I would like to do away with all this extra work too but that is a little scary.

Just curious what everyone else uses for refrigeration of RBCs in open heart surgery when surgery does not have their own refrigerators. We use the Igloo Playmate Elite cooler which have been approved for up to four units of RBCs for up to six hours with certain ice packs. We only have three of these coolers and can't find more (according to supervisor). The problem is that our open heart surgery load has increased to five or six a day on some days and we are working around the problem of not having enough coolers/ice packs by reusing the coolers that same day but placing bags of ice from our ice maker in them rather than the already used ice packs. This method hasn't been validated which makes me very uneasy but no moves have been made to find a different refrigeration method other than an online search for more of what we currently have. So, any suggestions? Thanks!

We call all newborn blood types and DAT results to nursing services. We also call all blood types on females who are within child bearing age. This seems very redundant considering the results are readily available to nursing services in their HIS. I would like to see this policy go away completely or at least tweaked to only calling positive DATs or blood types on RH negative females within child bearing age. It has been explained to me that we do this as a courtesy and also as patient advocates. Nursing services has also complained about this practice because they have to stop what they are doing to come to the phone when results are readily available in the computer. So any thoughts?

At this time, the patient is being double-billed (for the reference lab testing and the inhouse testing.) Whether the patient pays the bill or not, I do not know. This practice has been questioned by many, but so far, the policy is still in effect. Thank you everyone for the responses! You guys are so helpful!

Thanks for the response Eagle Eye! I can't think of anything we do that isn't documentable in Cerner (every stage of testing and interpretation.) Even the special antigen typing has a customized worksheet built in cerner. Most techs here would agree that the problem is that we have a generation of techs (and recently retired supervisor) who are from a time before computers and have a fear of them. We are on the brink of a new supervisor taking over and changes taking place. Hopefully our new supervisor is going to make our blood bank policies and procedures more current. If anyone knows of any standards or restrictions that require paper documentation of patient testing, please let me know. Thanks!